


Wash The Whites Alone in Hot Water

by orphan_account



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Jaydick Summer Exchange 2018, Laundry, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-16
Updated: 2018-07-16
Packaged: 2019-06-11 07:17:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15310254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Dick Grayson is a mess of a man. Jason is maybe kinda into him anyways.





	Wash The Whites Alone in Hot Water

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nachte](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nachte/gifts).



> Thank you to the Jaydick discord for all your help and support! Nachte, I know this isn't quite what you requested but I tried to keep in the spirit of it and I hope you like it despite <3

Dick Grayson could talk anyone into just about anything, Jason thought as he stood on Dick’s window ledge, in full Red Hood regalia. Dick himself had just “popped in” to his actual, literal, where-he lived-as-a-civilian apartment still in his Nightwing blues and blacks, to grab a case file that was relevant to Jason’s hunt. Which Dick had squeezed himself into in that infuriating way he made himself a part of everyone else’s business, all the time. Jason fidgeted. He didn’t like waiting out in the open, even as a kid. It was too suspicious for Red Hood to be standing out in the open like this, he reasoned with himself as he squeezed himself through Dick’s dumb, small, Bludhaven windows. Besides, just because he could balance on a ledge doesn’t mean he likes it. Why couldn’t Dick have found an apartment with a fire escape?

Besides coming in gave him an excuse to snoop. Sue him for wanting to know how the original Robin lived.

There wasn’t actually much to snoop on in Dick’s kitchen, Jason was surprised to find. Boxes of police files were spilling into the kitchen from other parts of the house and there were dishes piled up in the sink, but that was about it. He looked at one of the dishes; Corelle, like Dick was still in college. Some shopping bags left on the ground. Jason gingerly picked at some dirty laundry hanging over the back of a kitchen chair. The furniture wasn’t Jason’s style, but Dick had always been too eclectic for him.

He opened some of the boxes and flipped through but didn’t see anything of interest. Mostly cases that had already been abandoned. Jason saw a damn case from 1976 in there- just in case Dick got bored and wanted to mess with cold cases, as best Jason could tell. 

The dishes were really starting to annoy him.

Dick emerged from the doorway a second later, smacked Jason’s hand away from his files and they moved out. Jason pushed the dishes to the back of his mind until he somehow ended back in Dick’s apartment after patrol for a debrief. Dick ordered Chinese take-out and told Jason he could borrow whatever clothes he wanted.

“I think I have clean clothes somewhere,” Dick had said in passing and Jason curled his lip slightly as he dropped his helmet on Dick’s kitchen table. He realized not everyone was as neat as he was, and that Dick probably didn’t really have much time to clean up, but he couldn’t help feeling judgmental. Maybe he’d been shot at one too many times tonight, but he was losing his patience, and the fact that Dick Grayson was just… _Dick_ had always gotten under his skin in a way no one else could, not even Bruce. Got his fingers right into his heart and made him feel like he would take good care of it. But Jason wasn’t in the habit of trusting Bats, especially ones who could drag him back to the cave without him remembering to kick and scream.

Dick Grayson was dangerous to him for that reason.

So he hung on to all Dick’s imperfections, determined to drag them to the light, to punish Dick for… Jason didn’t know. For trying to get close to him again, he supposed. Dick being a mess of an adult was just the easiest to trash on.

“I’m not wearing your dirty laundry.”

“Find clean ones,” Dick shrugged, pulling a sweatshirt over his head. “Or do the laundry if it bothers you that much.” He raised an arm, sniffed, and seemed satisfied enough to drop his arm. Jason felt his nose wrinkle in disgust. This was the man he was supposed to live up to, Bruce’s perfect soldier?

Jason snatched a shirt from one of Dick’s piles that probably would have fit him and threw it at his chest. He didn’t even care if it hit Dick. “Do your own fucking laundry, god. You’re gross.”

Dick shrugged again, not seeming to mind. He had always been good at ignoring Jason’s tantrums and moods. Probably, Jason thought to himself, because he didn’t care. Why would Dick care about him, right? But the way Dick weaseled his way into his life showed a different theory.

“I don’t wanna fight with you tonight, Jay. I’m too tired for that.”

And now that Jason was looking at him without the Nightwing mask over his eyes he could see it. Bags that deep under the eyes weren’t a look even Dick Grayson wore well. “At least strip your armor off and help me carry the laundry down.”

Jason was going to protest, really, but when Dick bent over all the fight flew out of him. Damn Dick Grayson and his wonderful, persuasive methods. This had nothing to do with any of Dick’s other assets, no sir.

So that’s how Jason found himself perched on a drying machine older than him in Dick’s crappy apartment building’s basement at five a.m. on a Saturday- well, Sunday- night.

“You’re supposed the separate your lights and darks,” Jason said mildly as he watched Dick throw clothes into one of the washers. Jason noted that the clothes that seemed to be stolen from other people were getting washed first, particularly a Wayne Enterprises sweatshirt that Dick had stolen from Bruce when Jason was still Robin. Dick hadn’t gotten any closer to fitting into it over the years. Jason however, had and was looking forward to stealing it from Dick.

“It doesn’t matter that much for this stuff,” Dick insisted, and Jason grinned at the grumble, kicking at Dick. Dick dodged easily and tossed a pair of jeans at him. In the buzzing industrial light of the basement it was harder to remember why he was so mad Dick. Here, there wasn’t the looming sense of justice, and family, and Bruce. It was hard to see Dick as a standard when he threw his underwear in with everything else.

God, what a mess of a man. What had Jason seen in him when he was fourteen? He’d been in awe of him. He thought Dick was just the best person he’d ever met, save Batman. The ideal. He’d had such a crush on him because he thought he was perfect. And handsome, so fucking handsome. That, Jason could agree with his fourteen-year-old self on.

Jason forced himself to stop smiling. He wasn’t domestic and he certainly wasn’t domestic with Dick Grayson. This is why Dick was dangerous.

He kicked at him again.

“Don’t wash your underwear with your other clothes, jesus. You wash the whites alone in hot water.”

"It's fine," Dick replied as he tossed in a tide pod and started the machine. "I've always done it that way."

Jason grabbed Dick's hair. Dick had the stupid vague look of surprise he always got when Jason touched him. His mouth was slightly open and Dick's lips just looked so tempting, and Jason was so frustrated with him he wanted to shut him up. Dick was five years older than him, how was he so stupid when it came to housework? Why did Jason still see him as the ideal? It drove him crazy, the stupid feeling in his chest. He pressed his mouth against Dick's just because he made him so mad, so annoyed that he liked him. That Dick made his life light up even in a dingy basement doing Dick's gross laundry with the soundtrack of the machine filling with water behind them.

Dick kissed him back, smooth and slow and gentle, like how Jason had imagined it when he was fourteen. The vague musty basement smell didn't even diminish the sparks. Jason felt lightheaded, and it wasn't because he was leaning down from his perch on the drying machine. Dick really had his fingers in his heart now, grabbed and wasn’t going to let go. Dick was a mess, a mess in his home and his life and balancing everything, but he always made Jason feel special. Jason pulled away and just stared, committing Dick in front of the washing machine, in his smelly sweatshirt bags beneath his eyes a mile long, and washed-out in the lighting to memory while giving himself a minute to catch his breath. The gentle thump thump thump of the machine steadied his heart. He didn’t want to trust Dick with it, he hadn’t wanted to get close to him. He hadn’t planned on this.

Dick grinned at him, standing to press his forehead against Jason’s, hands on his hips. This was just Dick Grayson and Jason Todd, not Red Hood, no Nightwing, no Batman. Just them. Maybe domesticity made it easier to trust him, made Jason more at ease. Maybe it was just Dick who did it, in all his stupidity and lack of ability to take care of himself and light. He’d always been able to make people feel like they mattered. Dick squeezed his hips gently.

 "Maybe we can kiss over the dishes next time,” Dick joked.

"Absolutely fucking not, you slob, those you're doing yourself." Jason said before leaning down to kiss him again.

Dick Grayson may be a disaster of a grown man, but Jason was kinda into him anyways.

 


End file.
